WordPress 5.9 is scheduled to come out tomorrow, January 25th. It is chock-full of new features and improvements, but one looms over all the rest: Full Site Editing (FSE).

What is Full Site Editing?

Basically, FSE is the ability to use blocks (like those you might use right now with Gutenberg) throughout your whole site. You are no longer limited to pages and posts, but you can change your header, footer, 404 error page, etc. All of this WITHOUT USING ANY CODE.

You no longer need to go to a developer every time you need to update a logo or change a font. This is really big.

Learn better via video? Here’s one from Astra!

How do I get Full Site Editing?

In order to use FSE you need to have a block theme. These are specific themes designed to allow you to change things with blocks. Currently there are not many of these out there, but we expect that more will be developed soon. WordPress’s new default theme, Twenty Twenty-Two, is a block theme.

Kinsta has a good deep-dive into this new theme and how you can customize it. For a quick overview, keep reading!

How do I use Full Site Editing?

Once you have updated to WordPress 5.9 and have a block theme activated, it is a simple as going to Appearance -> Editor. (It is in beta now, since the official update has not yet arrived.

From here, you will be brought to the Editor from your home page. The similarities to editing pages with Gutenberg are certainly apparent.

From there, the possibilities are nearly endless. Think that the featured image for your clog post is too big on the home page? Go ahead and change it. Want to add a logo? No problem.

In fact, in a few short minutes, I was able to change the size of the picture, add social media buttons, and add a quote.

You can add menus and post dates, change colors and font, and even manipulate your columns.

And I didn’t need any HTML.

Should I get a block theme immediately?

For most people – no. While these features could be really cool down the line, they are still in their first version. If you have a theme that you love and is working for you, there is no need to switch just to switch. If you are planning a redesign soon, though, it may be worth looking into a block theme. That way, as things improve and grow you’ll be able to take full advantage.

Are there other changes in WordPress 5.9?

There are, although most of the noteworthy ones are around FSE and blocks. The block editor in general is getting some improvements too, so you can take advantage of that even if you aren’t using FSE right now.

Where we are now?

FSE looks like it has great potential as it matures in the future, but it doesn’t mean it is more awesome than what you already have. Keep it in mind for the future.

As things update and develop, we’ll keep you in the know! Check back for more information.

Clients bring this problem to me more than any other, so I know it’s a real problem. And for good reason!

Site speed is super important for a good reader experience and even comes into play in Google’s algorithm that determines site rankings. When a reader clicks on one of your links, you want that page loaded before something else shiny catches their eye – like that next cat video on YouTube.

Having personally logged in to the dashboards of thousands of sites to apply our services, I can tell you speed is a legitimate concern. It’s not only aggravating readers on the front end, but many bloggers are putting up with slogging through an incredibly slow editing experience that is costing them valuable time.

You’re probably already doing the simple recommendations (like “use a caching plugin!”), BUT if you try some of the others, often many hours invested will only improve your site speed about 1% and potentially cause functionality on your site to break. ☹

Let’s uncover 4+ easy solutions that actually work to speed up your WordPress blogs. First however, we need to dispel some of the myths.

Myth 1: Google PageSpeed Insights is Always Correct When It Says Your Site is Slow

Clients often email in a panic bemoaning their “terrible” site speed and waving around their PageSpeed Insights grade to prove it – “If I’m not cool with my kids bringing home a D, there’s no way this F is going to fly on my site…”

Often, we find out their actual speed numbers aren’t that bad.

The grade you get from that or any other tool should be taken with a grain of salt. It is absolutely possible to have a fast site and still get a bad grade.

In fact, if your site uses an ad network, it’s virtually impossible to get a good grade from most of these tools (more below).

There are many starting points or metrics to measure your site’s speed:

•         How long does your site take to send the very first piece of information to the browser?
•         When does the above the fold content appear?
•         How long before the reader first interacts with your page?
•         At what point is everything 100% loaded?

Google has before stated they would put the most emphasis on… well, none of them. Now they have announced their push for Core Web Vitals, but we still don’t know how they are going to factor in with everything else.

I would argue the best metric is the feel test. Quite simply, does your page feel slow to you when you visit? Does it feel like you’re waiting longer than you’d like?

Today’s SEO is all about making your readers happy. If it feels slow to you, it will to your readers as well – and Google will notice that.

If so, it’s time to work on making it faster, and your PageSpeed Insights score is just one of the many tools you can use to help in that endeavor.

Just don’t let the total score dictate your efforts.

A Note About Ads

Let’s address the ads elephant in the room.

Ads introduce 3rd party scripts and images to your site that you have no control over. If you run an ad network, here are some of the pieces of your score you will only be able to change by reducing the total number of ads that appear on your site (exact names will vary depending on the tool you’re using):

•         Reduce DNS lookups
•         Make fewer HTTP requests
•         Compress components
•         Use cookie-free domains
•         Add Expires headers

I don’t recommend ditching a major source of income, but keep this fact tucked away in your mind: Every time you want to freak out because your site got a failing grade on a site speed analysis (and you really don’t settle for anything less than an “A” in real life), you need to breathe and accept the consequences ads have on your site speed.

Myth 2: Reducing Your Number of Plugins Will Speed Up Your Site

This one is always a popular tip from the gurus!

To be fair, in a sense it’s true. Every plugin loaded will take some time. Most often that time is not something you’ll notice when doing your feel test.

One site can be screaming fast with 100 well-written, lightweight plugins, while another site might be crawling along because of just one poorly written plugin.

Many of my clients ask about The Blog Fixer: “Will it slow down my site?”

No, it won’t – because our plugin doesn’t run on every load of the page. Other plugins do and depending on what they are doing can consume some of your server’s precious resources every time a reader goes to a post.

The point is, not all plugins are equal when it comes to affecting the performance of a site. Removing plugins that provide great functionality with the sole goal of increasing site speed most often results in …the loss of great functionality. Not exactly a win-win.

Now, if you have a plugin on your site you’re not using, by all means remove it. If you don’t gain anything on the performance side, it’s still a good idea for site security.

But instead of just blindly throwing away plugins you’re using, I would recommend checking lists like this one that describe popular plugins known to slow things down while also suggesting faster alternatives.

Real Solution #1: Upgrade your Host

Now that those myths are out of the way, let’s talk about what you can do to truly move the (speed) needle.

If you use a shared server on one of the big “budget” hosts and think your site feels slow, I guarantee you’d benefit from upgrading your host.

Over the course of servicing 3,500 sites on about 100 different hosts, I’ve experienced both the good and the bad. Consistently, sites on those well-known budget hosts are the ones that crawl along (and often run into the occasional 500 error due to a lack of resources).

While there are several good hosts to choose from, I’ve found sites on one particular host stand out as running the fastest – and that’s BigScoots.

The first time I ran into a site hosted by BigScoots, it was easily the fastest I’d ever dealt with. I immediately emailed the owner to find out who she hosted with and moved all my own sites over.

What kind of speed difference can a host make?

As I mentioned, I’ve personally logged into thousands of WordPress dashboards and can always tell a good host from bad. To understand the difference, think about browsing over dial-up vs. broadband (if you’re old enough to remember modems).

I wanted to be able to talk hard numbers instead of just antiquated analogies, so I decided to set up an experiment.

At The Blog Fixer, we use our plugin to scan all posts and pages of a site to determine problems that need to be fixed – we call this our Site Scan. We search for about 20 different issues, and on sites with a large number of posts, that search can take some time. (We’ve worked with sites as large as 90,000 posts!)

I tested speed differences between 3 different hosting plans: A “budget” shared host, BigScoots’ entry level shared plan, and BigScoots’ fully managed plan. I set up identical test sites and ran through our Site Scan on each, recording the time it took to finish. Testing like this on the backend is a good measure of how fast the server itself is.

The conclusion?

The “budget” host’s shared server was the big loser: BigScoots’ entry level plan was 140% faster, and their fully managed plan a whopping 400% faster.

That kind of change is going to move the needle far faster than poking away at tiny details for a half percent lift (or none at all). And the kicker? That least expensive plan at BigScoots only costs $3 more than the “budget” plan.

Action item: Choose a fast host! Changing hosts isn’t as big of a deal as it used to be. This is your foundation, and it’s worth doing before making any other “site speed” efforts.

Real Solution #2: Upgrade PHP

The next solution to act upon is upgrading your PHP version. I know what you’re thinking: “I’m not techy!!” Stay with me, it’s easy, I promise.

PHP is the programming language that powers the WordPress software behind the scenes. Just like WordPress, it has its own version numbers and is most often installed and maintained by your hosting company.

WordPress has always strived to maintain backwards compatibility, which means the minimum required version of PHP was 5.2 for many years. This version was released waaay back in 2006 and stopped being supported in January 2011.

That’s right, you could still run WordPress on top of software the predates the release of the first iPhone and was abandoned about 2 months after Instagram went public.

It’s rare that I find sites still running on top of PHP 5.2 these days, but listen: any version prior to 7 is really considered ‘ancient’ in terms of software. (Think “flip phone.”)

There are many great security reasons to make sure your site is running on at least version 7, but the most pertinent to this discussion is that version 7 can come with as much as twice the performance as anything in version 5. (Using the same site scan experiment above, I was seeing a performance increase of 140% after upgrading PHP on my “budget” shared server.)

Recent WordPress versions have begun displaying warnings on the dashboard if you have an old PHP version – pay attention to this!

Most hosts will display the PHP version your site is running on somewhere within your hosting dashboard. If you can’t find it, ask their support. (Ahem, it’s their job…)

 If your PHP version is anything less than 7, it’s time to upgrade – graduate from a flip phone to a smart phone. 

Action item: Open a ticket with your hosting provider,  and ask to be upgraded and have them check compatibility with your plugins. At this point, only very outdated ones are likely to cause a problem.

Boom – faster site.

Real Solution #3: Reduce Your Redirects

Redirects are almost always a necessary part of a site that’s been around a bit. If you started on HTTP and then moved to HTTPS, changed your permalink structure, or combined multiple posts into one, you’ve created redirects to make sure your readers end up in the right places.

This is good for SEO at first — however, what you might not realize is that redirects can slow down your site speed. One test found that it can be as much as 50%.

This is especially important to your mobile traffic, where internet speeds (and thus redirects) are even slower.

What’s more, often redirects get chained together, meaning the reader must go through multiple redirects after just one click, each part of the chain adding to the wait time. Instead of going from point A to point D (the destination URL), they might have to go from A to B to C to D.

For some links, this can’t be helped. You still want other sites that link to an old spot on your site to send readers to the right place.

However, all internal links on your site which you do have control over should be updated to go straight to the destination URL.

This process isn’t hard, but it is very tedious. You’ll want to update links in your sidebar, menus, and (most time-consuming) inside the content of your articles themselves.

What this looks like step by step:

•         The sidebar and menus are a quick half hour task most likely – just open each link and make sure that what you click on is the exact same URL as you end up on and edit any that are different. Your goal is to make the end URL what’s actually in the html code.
•         Now you need to open all your posts (yes, starting at the beginning).
•         You can either click on each link and watch for redirects or go to the text editor and do a visual scan.
•         You’re looking for URLs still starting with http:// or containing dates that you’ve since removed (for example:  https://yoursite.com/2011/06/28/google-plus-will-put-facebook-out-of-business).
•         Change these links to the final URL that doesn’t go through any redirects.

But Kris, you’re saying, I don’t like your advice anymore. This will take hours…days…maybe years if I still feed my children and sleep every night!

Any time a blogger feels like she needs to touch every post, it’s incredibly time consuming. That’s exactly why I created The Blog Fixer — to help my wife, who was constantly begging me to help her make mass changes on every post (like when Google first instituted nofollow).

The first “Fix” we ran on her blog changed 21,000 affiliate links to nofollow in just a few minutes.

For a huge time-saving shortcut on eliminating redirects, check out The Blog Fixer’s Redirect service.

Here at The Blog Fixer, we help bloggers automate the little tasks they loathe so they can get back to doing the parts they love (remember writing and interacting with readers, before Google and Amazon started changing everything with so many rules?).

We optimize your archives through white-glove services powered by our custom plugin, and to save bloggers precious time everything is installed and configured by our team.

What this looks like step by step:

•         Purchase the service.
•         Send my team a user on your WordPress blog.
•         We’ll run the service and eliminate redirects on every internal link on your blog.

It takes about 5 minutes, 5-and-a-half if you need to watch my video on how to make a new user in WP, or can’t remember where your business credit card is.

Action item: Edit all redirected internal links on your blog to hit the final target. You can do this DIY or with The Blog Fixer’s help.

Real Solution #4: Optimize Your Image Size

Cameras on phones these days are awesome. I took many breathtaking images during a hiking trip in Yosemite Valley. Like a proper Gen Xer, I uploaded 17 per day to Facebook.

Family and friends were amazed that they could see the individual mist droplets rising from waterfalls. All of that beauty means more and more bytes stuffed into each image file.

And, as you probably understand by now, every one of those extra bytes increases the load time of your post. If you haven’t paid close attention to pixels and bytes in each photo on your blog, you’ve got yourself a great place for optimization.

Multiply slow by the number of images in a post, and your readers have forgotten why they clicked to read your post because they noticed grass starting to grow while they were waiting for it to load.

Like redirects, this is even more important to your mobile traffic.

There are a variety of services out there that “smush” images, but the easiest solution I’ve found is ShortPixel. Their WordPress plugin is pretty much plug-and-play, and they have a bulk fix feature, which can fix all your existing images when coupled with one of their reasonably priced one-time plans.

What this looks like step by step:

•         Install the ShortPixel plugin.
•         Run their Bulk Optimization Tool – it will tell you the number of images it can optimize.
•         Purchase a one-time plan for the number of images you found in the last step.
•         Paste your key into the plugin.
•         Return to the Bulk Optimization Tool and kick it off.

Note: This may take a long time to run, sometimes even days, and you need to leave the tab open while it’s going. I recommend kicking it off on a Friday and letting it go all weekend while you enjoy family time. Check in every so often to make sure it hasn’t hit a glitch and needs you to press the button to start it off again. Oh and remember that hosting recommendation I made a few thousand words ago? Do that first. Slow hosts make this process as painful as a cross-country road trip with a teething toddler.

Once that’s done, you can grab a subscription for as low as $5/month to automatically optimize all images you upload in the future.

Action item: Install ShortPixel, purchase a one-time plan, and run it on your blog. It’s a game changer.

The Bottom Line on Site Speed for Bloggers

There’s always going to be more you can do to eke out every last bit of performance on your site.

However, it makes the most sense to use your time and money wisely by starting with the biggest “bang-for-your-buck” foundations, since there’s often a steep drop-off in your ROI when you tinker with optimizations beyond these.

Prioritize these first –get a great host, make sure they use the correct PHP version, ditch your redirects (I’m here to help), and optimize those images.

Then, go spend time with the family making memories (which you will solemnly swear to smush before publishing to your blog!) instead of fretting about every last detail in your PageSpeed Insights score.

May the site speed be with you, and may your blog end up faster than a toddler gets distrac…hey look, a new cat video…

Reading about Google’s Core Web Vitals feels a little like looking at a bowl of alphabet soup – LCP, FIP, CLS, AMP, UX… It all starts to run together. It’s easy to get lost before you’ve even started digesting.

In this guide our goal is to translate all of the acronyms into Blogger-speak. We want you to be able to communicate with your tech team, or even to do what you can on your own. But to do that, first everyone needs to be speaking the same language.

Core Web Vitals as Ranking Signals

In November 2020, Google announced that the Core Web Vitals they have defined will become ranking signals in May 2021. (This got delayed to mid-June 2021 as of April 19.) We don’t know exactly what this will look like yet, but it does mean that sites with good Core Web Vitals stats will, somehow, receive some kind of positive signaling in searches. Whether this is something visual for end-users or just something behind the scenes remains to be seen.

Google uses a number of other things as ranking signals, such as whether a page is mobile-friendly, if the page is on HTTPS, etc. This is going to be added on top of these other things.

Defining Core Web Vitals

There are three Core Web Vitals that Google has defined: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). They have also been calling them “Page Experience Signals,” which gives you an idea that they’re looking for a site that’s enjoyable, or at least not difficult, to use.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) / Loading

This vital is probably the most familiar to people. It measures how long it takes for a page’s main content to load. It is an aspect to page speed, a metric bloggers have been using for a long time. However, this specifically looks at the largest image or content block on the screen. Things “below the fold” do not factor in, nor does every separate item on the screen. Additionally, some elements such as video are not included in the measure.

A good LCP score is 2.5 seconds or below.

First Input Delay (FID)/Interactivity

First Input Delay measures how quickly a visitor can interact with your website. In other words, once someone clicks on something or interacts in any other way, how long does it takes for your website to respond. Can they expand menus, fill out forms, or scroll through images quickly?

A good FID score is less than 100 milliseconds.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)/Visual Stability

Cumulative Layout Shift is a measure of how much things move around on the page while it is loading. We’ve all had an experience where we go to click something on a website and accidently hit the wrong thing because something else on the page loaded and everything got moved down. You want to avoid this, as it creates a frustrating user experience. Pages should be stable quickly.

CLS is not measured in time, but in how much things move around on the page. A good CLS score is under 0.1.

Finding Core Web Vitals Scores

The standard Google recommendation for looking at your Core Web Vitals seems to be Google Search Console. On the right-hand menu, there is an option called “Core Web Vitals” under Enhancements.

This report will tell you how many of your URLs are poor, need improvement, or good on Core Web Vitals. However, to really get the information we were looking for we had to use PageSpeed Insights.

Here you can enter in individual URLs (your landing page, pages that you are most concerned about showing up with high results on searches, etc) and get their Core Web Vital scores. You can look at Mobile vs Desktop, individual scores, opportunities for improvement, etc.

For example, when we look at the Desktop score for our services page, we receive an overall “Good” score.

Below the overall score, we can see the scores for the three individual Core Web Vitals, plus a fourth metric “First Contentful Paint (FCP).”

Note that we received a “Good” overall score even though some of the individual metrics weren’t in the “good” range.

These numbers are based on real-world data. Below these you’ll find more scores that are based on their lab results. These will very often be different, since in the real-world people have different internet speeds, bandwidth, etc.

Google just came out with a new Page Experience report. Look for more information about this report in the future!

Improving Core Web Vitals

PageSpeed Insights also lists some Opportunities and Diagnostics that you can use to try to improve you Core Web Vital scores. None of them is a guarantee to put you in the green, but they may give you a clue as to what is happening if things are red.

The Opportunities are definitely written in tech.

We’re not going to through each individual suggestion here, but we can give some general advice for each of the Core Web Vitals.

A quick note before you take all of these suggestions as must-dos. A lot of the recommendations have trade-offs. Something that makes your page look great might slow it down a bit. Something that gets readers to “stick” and keep browsing might also shift things around. As with everything, you have to decide what is the more important thing for your site.

Improving LCP

Since LCP is an element of page speed, the suggestions may feel familiar. In fact, our biggest suggestion is one we’ve mentioned again and again: get a fast host. We are affiliates with BigScoots and get money if you sign up through us, but we would recommend them even if we didn’t. We can tell when we’re working on a site with a good host (or more accurately, we can tell when it is a bad host…), and they’re one of the best.

An easy one that you can do is to compress and optimize your images. There are a lot of plugins out there that can handle it automatically, or you can do it before you upload the image.

It is also a good idea to eliminate scripts and styling that you no longer need. If you’re looking for an excuse to clean up your site from old code, this is definitely it. We also recommend caching your website if you don’t already.

Lazy Loading can be a mixed bag. It helps overall page speed, but could actually slow down your website as it is another script to run. It is best used if your LCP is not an image.

Improving FID

Most of the suggestions for improving FID are very technical. You want to break up JavaScript code into smaller chunks that can run asychronously. You want to optimize your CSS. Determine if your third-party code is actually necessary and then remove it if it isn’t, or delay it if you can.

Basically, try to streamline everything possible. If you don’t need something, get rid of it. Think sleek.

Improving CLS

Content often shifts around on a page when the dimensions are not already pre-determined, since the page doesn’t know where things will end up. Make sure your images, ads, embeds, etc have dimensions set. And everything that can be preloaded (like web based fonts), should be.

Bad CLS scores are often a result of ads. AdThrive came out with a fix earlier this month, so if you use them make sure to read up on it and update their plugin. Mediavine also has an article about CLS and their ads, including a new setting.

Beyond that, the suggestions are similar to what is best for the other Core Web Vitals. Get rid of unnecessary code.

How Good is Good Enough?

Ultimately, this is going to be different for every website, even for every page within a site. Since this is affecting Google rankings, it is most important for those pages where you are getting significant traffic from Google searches as opposed to social media, email, etc. Also, it is most likely more important for highly-contested search terms. If there are a lot of options out there, Google will (from what we can tell), give preference to those with good Core Vital score. Think of it as a tie-breaker. If you already have the corner on a certain search, that may not be where you want to put your energy, at least right now.

Core Web Vitals and The Blog Fixer

If you’re looking to speed up your site, our Internal Permalink Redirect Fix can help by eliminating redirects that slow down your server.

If you have any other specific things you have in mind that we could help with, give us a shout! We’d love to hear how we can help.

The WordPress 5.7 release is slated for March 9, 2021.

There are a number of changes that should not need any action on your part: Lazy-loading iframes, color palette standardization, etc. We’re going to focus on two changes that could impact you and how your blog runs: HTTPS detection and migration and jQuery update.

HTTPS Migration

What is HTTPS?

This is a signal used by browsers such as Chrome and Firefox to determine if your site was being served up securely. Any page that is on HTTP instead of HTTPS, or any page with resources such as an image that is on HTTP will show up as insecure on these browsers.

Why does this update matter?

In the past, it was difficult to migrate a WordPress site from HTTP to HTTPS. Finding and updating each resource was time-consuming and error-prone. Now WordPress users will be able to click a button to update these resources on the fly.

On the fly? What does that mean?

That means that nothing will actually change in the database. WordPress will change it on the front-end whenever someone visits the site.

This is similar to how the Real Simple SSL plugin handles things.

What are the pros and cons of doing it that way?

The pros are that it is easy and inexpensive. The site will display as secure for users without much work on your end.

As for cons, having to make these updates on the fly every time a website is viewed can slow things down. Also, if WordPress ever deprecates this service or it breaks in an update (not that things like that ever happen…), your resources will resort back to HTTP. Finally, if you ever migrated the website away from WordPress then things will break again.

Is there a way to make these changes permanent?

Yes! The Blog Fixer’s Mixed Content Error Fix makes all of the needed changes on your database. It does not depend on a plugin to keep working and the changes will stay even if you migrate to another platform.

jQuery Update

What is jQuery?

The technical answer is that jQuery is a JavaScript library. What is important for you to know is that WordPress and a lot of plugins and themes use it behind the scenes.

Why does it matter that it is updating?

WordPress has been compatible with old versions of jQuery for a long time. However, in order to clean things up and get rid of a lot of outdated things, they are going to require a certain version of jQuery. This means that any plugins and themes you have that use an older version of jQuery could no longer going to work.

When is this happening?

It has already started, but slowly. They started laying some of the groundwork in WordPress 5.5. In 5.6, they updated the version of jQuery that they were using. They also put out a plugin called jQuery Migrate that would allow you to still run the apps on the older version of jQuery. With the March 9 release, jQuery Migrate will be removed. Any plugins and themes that are not compatible could stop working.

What should I do?

First, you should update your plugins. If they are being maintained, hopefully they will be all set for the jQuery update.

Also, remember that you don’t have to update on day one. Give it a little bit of time so you can hear how it went for other people.

Before you update, take and download a backup of your site.

After that, the best advice we have seen and that we give ourselves is to set up a testing site. That way you can test the latest version of WordPress there. If anything is not working, you’ll have to communicate with the plugin and theme developers.

How do I make a test site (AKA staging)?

Ideally this would be done easily through your host. (If it isn’t, look into someone like BigScoots [affiliate link]. Yes, we get money if you sign up, but we would refer you to them even if we didn’t.) The basic steps are:

1. Push site to staging
2. Upgrade staging to 5.7
3. Check pages on your site, especially those that use plugins, for issues.
4. If everything looks good, update the live site.

Here’s a more in-depth description of creating a staging site.

What about The Blog Fixer plugin?

We are all ready for the jQuery update, and have been for a while!

If you have Live Fix, check to see if you have version 0.8.7.1 or higher. Yes? Then you’re good! If not, now is a good time to update.

If you use The Blog Fixer’s functionality to maintain anything else – removing noreferrers, removing comment author links, etc – rest assured that you’re all set no matter what version you have.

You know the feeling…you’re hard at work tackling the million and one tasks that your website requires when BAM! There’s the dreaded Google manual penalty email in your inbox. If you don’t know what I’m talking about consider yourself insanely lucky – it looks like this:

You may be wondering, “Why am I getting this penalty?”, “Which link(s) did I forget to NoFollow?” and “How can I get out of this Google jail?“. Lucky for you, that’s what this post is all about.

First things first, what is NoFollow?

Simply put, a NoFollow link is any link with a rel=”nofollow” HTML tag attached to it. This tag essentially ‘talks’ to search engines and tells them to ignore that link. These tags don’t impact your search engine rankings because they don’t pass PageRank.

Why does the NoFollow Tag exist?

According to Backlinko.com, Google created the NoFollow tag in 2005 in an effort to “combat blog comment spam”. Not long after, other search engines like Bing and Yahoo took notice and adopted it as well. This is because the rise of blogs and the rise of comment spam go hand in hand. Essentially the rise in comment spam led to two main problems (Backlinko.com):

1. “Spammy sites started to rank really well in Google. This pushed high quality sites out of the search engines”
2. “Because the tactic worked so well, blog comment spam quickly spun out of control”.

So what exactly is a NoFollow Google Penalty?

You are at risk for a manual Google penalty if you have:

1. Sponsored posts,
2. Affiliate links,
3. Product giveaways,
4. free review items AND haven’t included NoFollow on every single link.

Raise your hand if you may have missed rel=”nofollow” on even one such link on your WordPress blog. Any unnatural outbound links violate Google Webmaster guidelines and Google won’t hesitate to penalize you for missing even ONE NoFollow tag.

What does this penalty mean for you?

In my experience reversing dozens of Google penalties, I’ve learned a few things:

1. Nobody wants to get that email from Google — it’s a real productivity killer.
2. Even one errant link without NoFollow prevents the penalty from being reversed. Google is a bit like the IRS in this way!
3. Most bloggers have thousands of links Google wants to see NoFollow on.

So adding that simple little tag keeps Google penalties out of your inbox. And if that wasn’t reason enough, there are other benefits to adding NoFollow tags to your links – but more about that in a bit.

Let’s talk about when you should add NoFollow tags to your links and when you should leave a link alone.

When should you use the NoFollow tag?

According to The Ahrefs Blog, “If you care about your website’s performance in search engines, then knowing when and when not to use nofollowed links isn’t just important – it’s crucial”. You want to “prioritize the building of followed links” while at the same time ensuring you don’t get on Google’s bad side.

You should pay particular attention to adding the NoFollow tag to the following links:

• Paid Links (ALWAYS and I stress ALWAYS, NoFollow paid links)
  • Why is it SO important to NoFollow paid links?
    • BeautifulDawnDesigns.net says the reason goes back to Google Guidelines: “Google wants all paid links to be set to nofollow because they do not want those links to influence search results, or to impact the user experience negatively”. This goes back to the main reason that Google created the NoFollow tag in the first place. So definitely focus on these links to reduce your chances for a Google penalty.
• Links in Comment Forums (comment links are a huge magnet for spammers)
  • If you use WordPress or Blogger, then the good news is your comment section is automatically NoFollowed by default
  • According to Beautifuldawndesigns.net, using NoFollow in your comment section is “good practice. This helps prevent people from spamming your comments because they want a dofollow link”.
• Links in Advertisements and Sponsored Links
  • This is especially the case when you have no interest in supporting or endorsing another site.
• Links in Press Releases
  • Again, not all of these links are quality or trust-worthy so you want to make sure you aren’t promoting spam on your site.

According to SearchEngineJournal.com the key is being “as natural as possible” with your NoFollow links.

So, what exactly does ‘being natural’ mean?

It means your link profile should be diverse containing a mix of NoFollow and DoFollow links. Google will zero-in on sites containing only dofollow links and a lopsidedly high percentage of followed backlinks. If your site looks like that then you’re basically waving a giant red flag with the words “spam-filled” and “suspicious” on it (and you can say hello to a NoFollow Google Penalty email).

Trust me, you are going to want to avoid setting of the alarm bells at Google Headquarters – the use of NoFollow tags can’t be stressed enough (oh, and did I mention The Blog Fixer offers a NoFollow fix? More about that in a bit!).

In addition to avoiding Google jail, there are a few other benefits to using the NoFollow tag on certain links. According to The Ahrefs Blog NoFollow tags:

1. “…help diversify your link profile”
2. “…drive traffic, and traffic drives followed links”
3. “…protect against Google penalties” (as previously mentioned by yours truly)

When should you NOT use the NoFollow tag?

There are also a few key links that you should NEVER use the NoFollow tag on. Brian Dean of Backlinko.com breaks it down like this: “DoFollow links help your search engine rankings. NoFollow links don’t.” Using the NoFollow tag website-wise may keep you out of Google jail but it will also cost you a  high Google ranking.

NEVER add the NoFollow Tag to: (SearchEngineJournal)

1. Bylines of authors or guest posters
2. Links to interviewees
3. Links in (legitimate) editorial content

You want to make sure that you aren’t using the tag on links which help your site. Basically, there needs to be a sprinkling of common sense when using (or not using) the NoFollow tag.

Let’s back up a bit and chat about Google TrustRank and how your NoFollow tags can affect it (and why you should care!).

First off, what is Google TrustRank?

Brian Dean from Backlinko.com has a great article outlining Google TrustRank. If you have the time, I’d definitely recommend reading the whole thing but for the purpose of this post, I’ll highlight the key parts.

In a nutshell, Google TrustRank “helps Google and other search engines combat web spam” because it “measure so-called “trust signals”…which “evaluate whether or not core ranking signals (like links and content) are legitimate”. Google made an official statement explaining TrustRank: “PageRank is the most well known type of trust” therefore “…if you have a lot of very high quality links, then you tent to earn a lot of trust with Google”.

That’s where TrustRank directly connects to NoFollow tags: it is crucial to use the NoFollow tag on certain links. This allows you to combat the spammy links on your site and maintain the trustworthiness (and therefore the “TrustRank”) of your site. TrustRank is somewhat like a “filter” so “if Google sees your links and content as trustworthy, they pass the filter” (Backlinko.com). On the flip side, if your links are not viewed as trustworthy then Google TrustRank will block them and lower your TrustRank.

Curious about where your site lands on Google’s TrustRank? Your best bet would be to check out the Moz metric called “MozTrust”. Click on this link from Moz.com to learn more about how their tool works and to see how your site stacks up.

How can you see if a link is NoFollow?

Ok, back to your NoFollow needs. You have two options to find out which of the links on your site are NoFollow. You can go the manual route and do it yourself OR you can use a NoFollow plugin to do it for you.

How to Check NoFollow Tags Manually in HTML:

1. Start by hitting the right click button on your browser. You want to find and click on ‘view page source‘.
2. Once you’ve done that, find the link in the HTML on that page.
3. You will see one of two things (1) a “rel=”nofollow” tag meaning the link is nofollowed (2) no tag meaning the link is dofollow (it’s just that simple!)

You can also go the route of using a plugin.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the best WordPress plugins available:

Ultimate NoFollow 

Link:

Ultimate Nofollow

What does it do?

This plugin allows you to control all of your NoFollow links on your website (like most of the others on this list). It’s a very popular plugin with active installs numbering more than 40,000.

How much does it cost? FREE.

Pros:

• According to Wpvivid.com, this plugin is “by far one of the most feature-rich and flexible plugins”.
• Roadtoblogging.com states that “If you’re looking for a simple plugin that lets you add a nofollow link, this is the one you should choose”.
• Access to NoFollow shortcodes, nofollow option for individual/collective blogroll links
• Ability to NoFollow all links in your comment forum
• Ability to manually add the NoFollow tag individually or based on a category

Cons:

• Not automatic, have to add the NoFollow links yourself
• Not compatible with Gutenberg as of yet

NoFollow for External Link

Link:  NoFollow Manager

What does it do?

This plugin automatically add the NoFollow tag to all of your external links.

How much does it cost? FREE.

Pros:

• Perfect if you want to automatically unfollow all your external links (NOT something I would necessarily recommend, however)
• Gives you the ability to remove certain links from having the NoFollow tag added
• Adds the NoFollow tag to past, present and future external links

Cons:

• Only for your external links
• No option to do it manually like other plugins on this list

WP Link Status Pro 

Link: WP Link Status Pro

What does it do?

According to Formget.com, this plugin is “the best”. Comes with multiple features including changing URLs, anchor text, managing your  NoFollow tags, and has better than average configuration features. Allows you to manage your site’s NoFollow tags “to make your site more natural”. It gives you the ability to “replace and redirect” links if you need to make changes. A great feature of this plugin is that you can run it in background mode and can perform multiple scans at the same time with different configurations.

How much does it cost?

• You have two options: (1) 6 months with support for $20 (2) 12 months with support for $26

Title and NoFollow for Links

What does it do?

Allows you to manually add nofollow tags to both internal and external links.

How much does it cost? FREE.

Pros:

• 10,000 active installations
• Described as the plugin “for people who like manual work” (https://wpvivid.com/nofollow-link-plugins.html)
• Ability to pick and choose which external links you add the NoFollow link to
• Allows you to add the NoFollow tags on both internal and external links
• Ability to include a title when you add a link and make it NoFollow

Cons:

• Not compatible with Gutenberg
• If you’re looking for a plugin to do the work for you automatically, then this is not the one for you

MozBar Chrome Browse Extension 

Link: MozBar

What does it do?

• MozBar finds NoFollow tags as part of its many features, so if all you need is an extension to find your nofollow tags then you’ll be getting more than you need here
• Moz describes its extension as “The all-in-one SEO tool for research on the go”

How much does it cost?

• You can use the free version or opt for the Pro version which is available with a paid subscription

How to Add NoFollow to a link

Ok, now you’re in the home stretch – you know which links need to be NoFollowed, you know which links are or are not NoFollowed – now it’s time to add the tag to those links! You might be asking yourself “How?”. Again, you have two options: 1) Manually do it yourself or 2) Have a service do it for you.

Introducing The Blog Fixer’s NoFollow Fix

Want to stay out of Google Jail? I’m guessing the answer is a resounding “YES!”. The Blog Fixer’s NoFollow Fix protects your blog from a Google manual penalty quickly so you can keep doing what you love. Nofollow thousands of sponsored and affiliate links on your WordPress blog in less time than it takes to thoroughly update one post.

So, how does this work exactly?

The Blog Fixer is a complex plugin that can change just about anything throughout your entire blog, as long as you tell it a few rules to follow. The Blog Fixer team (real people) will run the Nofollow Fix function of the plugin on your blog so that you barely have to think at all. Then with the optional Live Fix subscription, the plugin will continue to protect you from the manual Google penalties with every post you write — without you having to lift a finger or remember a thing (a BIG upgrade from the plugins and extensions previously outlined).

Click here to purchase or to learn more!